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SUSS is a new musical collaboration from some old hands—Gary Leib, Pat Irwin, Jonathan Gregg and William Garrett, under the general direction of Bob Holmes. Between them there are too many credentials to list, all over the map and everywhere in between. Straddling the intersection of ambient and country/western music, SUSS sound like the future and the past, sci-fi folded over on spaghetti westerns. It’s music that would be appropriate for both a trip to Death Valley and aboard the International Space Station; however, your living room will do in a pinch.

SUSS have played a few shows lately supporting last year’s Ghost Box, released by the reliably adventurous New York label, Northern Spy Records. They’ve got a new 7″ as well, “Chisholm Trail” b/w “Aurora,” the latter previewed last month live at Union Pool, the vinyl due out this Friday. SUSS take it low and slow here, measuring out improvised passages blending into the album’s compositions. In person, the interior Brooklyn environs melted away as the band mapped desert territories under the stars. This recording will take you partway there, but I also recommend heading out to see them live your first opportunity. Do also head over to Bandcamp, where you can pick up the record and single.

I recorded this from our usual spot at Union Pool, an expert board mix from FOH Leslie Wolf combined with room mics. The sound is excellent. Enjoy!

For most of its nearly ten-year history, this website has been a collaboration, reflecting the individual tastes and contributions of those who contribute to it. In the past two years, it’s hard to overstate the contribution that Eric PH has made to the team, introducing not only a number of great recordings, but a slew of new bands to the mix. Horse Lords, of Baltimore, are one of his very best finds, and since he first saw them in 2015, we’ve been hoping to do something with them directly. The band headlined a stacked bill this past Saturday at Trans-Pecos, which felt like a welcome, air-conditioned respite from the steaming heat outside. But more important than the change in temperature was the change in perspective, as each of the forward-thinking acts on the bill reminded us of how powerful experimental music can be. While too many bands of their ilk toil in obscurity, Horse Lords have received their due of late, in the form of stellar reviews for their latest album, Interventions (released by NYC label Northern Spy).

The band’s heady combination of guitar, bass, drums, and at-times keys, sax, and second percussion isn’t the easiest to describe; it has a tinge of desert blues to it, the controlled chaos of free jazz, the music-school time shifts of math rock and the propulsiveness of, well, rock. The band brought all of that complexity to the stage and didn’t miss a beat, holding our attention through the latest album’s first single, “Truthers” straight through to the album’s centerpiece, “Toward the Omega Point,” at the end. As Eric PH pointed out in his review of the 2015 show, the band members know how to fill the spaces in the music when they need to, but also know when to leave some open air. We were floored by the band’s musicianship, their control, and their ability to craft a setlist that hung together through a diverse range of sounds. For anyone who cares about where music is going next, be sure to put Horse Lords on your list of things to see.

I recorded this set with a set of Schoeps MK22 open cardioids near the front of the room, a pair of Naiant X-X omnis split onstage, and a soundboard feed from the night’s engineer. The sound quality is phenomenal. Enjoy!

Chris Forsyth and his Solar Motel gang just finished up a tour with the Pacific Northwest’s monsters of psych, Heron Oblivion, and the NYC area was blessed with two stops, first at Jersey City’s WFMU Monty Hall and the second at Union Pool. Naturally, we were there at Union Pool to capture their performances (including openers and fellow Philadelphians Spacin’ which we’ll have up soon). Forsyth’s set gives us a lot to chew on: an extended, exploratory rendition of “The First Ten Minutes of Cocksucker Blues” and some of his finest vocals yet on “The Rarity of Experience, Parts 1-2.” In the group’s tradition of bringing covers out on the road—we’ve previously caught a couplerenditions of “The Calvary Cross” and most recently the Dead’s “Cold Rain and Snow”—this tour saw a relentless version of The Dream Syndicate’s “The Days of Wine and Roses.” Rounding things out is the ponderous “Harmonious Dance,” ending things on the quiet side before Heron Oblivion stormed the stage. Forsyth & Co. will be back in town for another superb bill with Oneida at the Knitting Factory. Buy your tickets early and often; we’ll see you there.

I recorded this set from our usual location in the venue, with a board feed from FOH Leah. The sound is excellent. Enjoy!

Ohio is an interesting place. In some ways its an Eastern industrial state and in other ways its an agricultural Midwestern state. Its a state with large cities and large swaths of farmlands. Its largest metropolitan area of Cleveland is itself a unique place which is geographically both a lake city and a river city. Despite that Cleveland also happens to be the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it’s music has always indicated a similar off-kilter personality. Its most well known punk band was also one of the first art-rock outfits — Pere Ubu. Its early 70’s classic rock band was also a unique mix of jazz and blues — The Numbers Band. Its 80s alternative band was also a “gunk punk” act — Death of Samantha. And its 90s hardcore band was also its 90s metal band — the inimitable craw.

Even craw‘s reunion didn’t follow the standard script. We’ve seen a ton of these 80s and 90s band reunions. Generally speaking, the usual scenario is that the continued existence of a cabal of fans manages to finally convince a band of some repute to bury the hatchet and reuite. Most times the band enters the reunion with the advantages of maturity and sobriety and does their legacy proud. But the craw reunion was in large part the result of one uber fan who grew up to be a respected journalist and musician himself. Hank Shteamer is a senior editor at Rolling Stone and he plays in the bands Aa (Big A little a) and STATS, but as a teenager he was one of a few very rabid craw fans who saw the band repeatedly. His fanship never went away, and as outlined in this excellent Observer piece, when Hank teamed up with local record label Northern Spy the pairing produced 1993-1997, a remastered box set of craw’s long out of print first three records along with a 200-page book with an essential history of the band. The final piece of the puzzle was realized when craw agreed to play two reunion shows, one of course in Cleveland and the other at Saint Vitus in Brooklyn.

I arrived early on Saturday to record the show at Saint Vitus and was immediately met with the good news that the venue was sold out. As the crowd filtered in during the opening sets, it was an interesting amalgam of various types of people of various ages and styles, and as we found out when the band took the stage, from various geographical areas — people traveled from far and wide to see this show. But the crowd did all have one thing in common, they were there to hear the music, as all attention was focused forward to the stage and there’s almost no talking on this recording. craw took the stage and immediately recognized the large contingent of traveling fans before launching directly into a lengthy “Caught My Tell” from their still-in-print 2002 album Bodies for Strontium 90, and then stuck with that album for the next few songs. The remainder of the show consisted of material that appears on the current box set as the songs were roughly grouped by album in reverse-chronological order. By the time craw reached their self-titled debut album and one of its highlights “405”, the show was virtually complete. While craw didn’t leave the stage, the final two “encore” numbers were performed by the entire 7-piece band the represented every player who had appeared on all of their albums.

For a band that hadn’t performed live in the better part of a decade, and who has always relied on mathematical precision in their riffs, this show was phenomenally tight and focused. At the center of it all was lead vocalist Joe McTighe, whose sing/scream/talk approach to the strangely literary lyrics are part of the unique draw of this singular band. Although this show is purportedly the final craw show of this all-too-brief reunion, honestly I can’t imagine that the band won’t keep playing gigs. When something is this good and the fans are calling for more, there’s no reason not to give them more. At least that’s what we hope is the case.

I recorded this set with the Schoeps cards mounted in front of the soundboard and mixed with an excellent feed provided by Vitus’s FOH wiz Nick. The sound quality is superb. Enjoy!

The story of how this “NYCTaper Presents” show came together is rather simple — we saw an open date at the tail end of DVA’s most recent US tour and arranged for the band to play that night at Trans Pecos. As you may recall, it was at a Northern Spy show at Pecos in early 2014 where we first saw and instantly admired this quite unique Czech duo. DVA is one of those bands that defies musical categorization. The duo loop a variety of captured sounds and perform their songs over an orchestra of loops. Its really something quite remarkable to see live. For their Pecos return, DVA performed a set similar to their previous visit which was exactly why we brought them back. The band featured three of the seven songs from their most recent album, Nipomo, released last year on Northern Spy Records.

I recorded this set with the Sennheiser cards mounted at the front of the stage and mixed with a board feed provided by house FOH Joe. The sound quality is superb. Enjoy!

Since first seeing the Czech band Dva back at Trans Pecos in January, we were struck by the originality of their vision and the playfulness of their style. With their unique mix of instruments and influences — you’ll hear banjos and sax, latin jazz and electronica — the band doesn’t sound quite like anything, but little pieces of everything. This show found Dva closing out the Northern Spy / Ba Da Bing Showcase at SXSW, and it was the ideal way to end a party, with audience members joining the band on stage as they sent us into the night with “Mulatu”. This set did not focus entirely on their most recent release, Nipomo, but rather hopped around their catalog, serving up gems like the set opener “Nunovo Tango”. If you take SXSW for what it should be — a chance to broaden your horizons, seeing worthy acts that might not have been on your radar screen — you’d have been hard pressed not to call this Dva set one of the highlights of the week.

I recorded this set in the same manner as the other recordings from this showcase, with Schoeps MK4V microphones and a soundboard feed. While the sound reveals some limitations of the venue acoustics compared to our previous recording of the band, overall it is quite good. Enjoy!

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

The visual you’re seeing above is the members of Cloud Becomes Your Hand, gathered on the floor to perform a ritualistic outro dance as their instruments, still on stage, tick down the final minutes of their bonanza of a South By Southwest set. Of all the bands who played the Northern Spy / Ba Da Bing showcase this year, it was CBYH that I perhaps looked forward to the most. Their latest record, Rocks or Cakes, released in February, is a delightful dose of avant-prog weirdness that finds itself throwing traditional song structures out the window, or fucking with pop sounds so hard you don’t know what to make of them. The band’s electronic sounds are made not by a MacBook Pro, but by live instruments, some that I have to assume were custom-designed for the band’s purposes. Where CBYH succeeds and other bands fail, in part, is that their songs are actually good in addition to being “weird”; amid the layers of sounds are also melodies for you to latch onto, as on the standout track “Sand of Sea”, streaming below. This set found the band giving us most of Rocks or Cakes, and the songs were all the more impressive to see live. We expect to see great things from this Brooklyn-based band; don’t miss them when they’re back on the road.

I recorded this set in the same manner as my other recordings this night, with Schoeps MK4V microphones in the optimum position hanging over the crowd and a soundboard feed. The sound quality of this particular set is the best of the night, and is outstanding. Enjoy!

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

The conventional story going into this show — the album release party for Aa’s new album VoyAager on Northern Spy — was that the band had returned after a lengthy hiatus to produce their first album in seven years and that it is a triumphant return. But things sort of took a detour along the way, namely in the form of a fatal computer crash midway through the set. That being said, after a few days to digest what was clearly a weird end to a show, we went back to listen to the half-show we recorded. Its ends up that the 3 song set is absolutely phenomenal, performance-wise and sound quality wise. The Aa stage set was essentially John Atkinson on electronics and vocals and a quartet of drummers. From the outset the energy in the set was stunning as the drum corps kept up with Atkinson’s frenetic soundscape. Its almost as if the laptop couldn’t take the heat from the stage. The brevity of the set gives us the opportunity to stream the whole show, and all three tracks are streaming below.

The band’s personnel seems to evolve from show to show, and now that they are out on the West coast touring, Atkinson will be reunited with band co-founder (along with Josh Bonati) Aron Wahl who now resides in Los Angeles. We expect to capture a full Aa show when they return East, but for now this mini set is a very nice taste of the excellent music they are currently producing.

I recorded this show with the Sennheiser cards mounted on a stand at the front of the stage and mixed with a board feed. The mics picked up mostly drums and the soundboard was primarily the electronics, but after a few test mixes I believe I finally found the right balance. The sound is quite superb. Enjoy!

Full Disclosure: It was announced yesterday that NYCTaper is a media sponsor of a SXSW show co-presented by Northern Spy and Baba Bing Records. This relationship with Northern Spy in no way influenced our positive review of their artist Aa. We wouldn’t have posted the recording if the performance wasn’t top notch.

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

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